Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD

[Infinite]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

The follow up to the infamous The SSD Anthology on Anandtech.

A must read guide. Explains what been going on since the last article, so it is mainly about the New Intels.

Confirms Intel G2 are King of the Hill followed closely by Indilinx ones.

[TooNice]

That was a good read. Looks like Samsung needs to work on something new to keep up. Is there an easy way of differentiating the G2 from the G1 if the nm is not mentioned?

[Singh400]

Thanks for the heads up - I loved the other two articles from AnandTech.

[cmd]

That whole article was a good read. The 'Why You Absolutely Need an SSD' page is what I'm going to link people to in the future who ask me to justify why I bought my SSD.

A difference of 24 seconds hardly seems like much, until you actually think about it in terms of PC response time. We expect our computers to react immediately to input; even waiting 6.6 seconds is an eternity.

Even worse difference on a slower (than the VelociRaptor), fragmented hard disk.

[Terbinator]

That was a good read. Looks like Samsung needs to work on something new to keep up. Is there an easy way of differentiating the G2 from the G1 if the nm is not mentioned?

The price - Gen 2's are not only faster but cheaper also as well as coming in a silver finish - and they either have G1 (Gen 1) or G2 (Gen 2) in the product name.

[Infinite]

Still kinda stupid to have the same model number, should have increase the number to 26 or something. And why is it 25 in the first place?

[malfunction]

I was tempted to say that "X25" is the price multiplier between the SSD and a normal HDD (per GB) but the truth is that it's far worse than that when you compare the sweetspot for mechanical HDDs - 1 / 1.5TB drives at the moment are around 5p per GB while the X25s are more like £2.10 per GB (rough figures) so it's more like X42 at the moment. Still keeping my fingers crossed for a price war on SSDs but I can't see it happening just yet

[Terbinator]

Still keeping my fingers crossed for a price war on SSDs but I can't see it happening just yet

The Intel drives are so good though that it will take a fair price decrease from the other drives to make them attractive (to me atleast) and then whats to say Intel wont drop their price (we can haz plz?)

[oolon]

Still kinda stupid to have the same model number, should have increase the number to 26 or something. And why is it 25 in the first place?

Its the physical size of the drive 2.5 inches, they also do an X18 range that is 1.8 inches.

[Infinite]

Lol oh yeh, my brain died for a moment there.

[GheeTsar]

Wow, quite a read (again). It's not going to do anything to help the struggle to get hold of a Gen 2 X-25M at a reasonable price though!

[Bugbait]

Hmm, now I really want one . Well, 3 maybe...OS, Games, and HTPC. Trying to track down stock might be a bit trickier.

[oolon]

Wow, quite a read (again). It's not going to do anything to help the struggle to get hold of a Gen 2 X-25M at a reasonable price though!

Scan has the 80GB@£171.12 in stock, the 160GB@£338.28 is overdue should have been there yesterday, so a pre-order would work. Not sure if you consider the price reasonable though, for me they are still rather to pricey. I would also wish to use a mirrored pair, so don't think the trim commands would make it over the mirror, so personally think. So I think I will get 2 15K 147GB SAS drives, which are £145 each. Geek part of me wants an SSD, may be next cycle.

[fedora]

Was thinking buying an OCZ Summit 120GB, but now I changed my mind. Thanks for sharing this.

[dangel]

I'd come to the same conclusion as the article really - and so I got the intel gen 2 drive and it's absolutely fab. Anyone who tells you they're not worth having really ought to try it first - if it's affordable to you then do it, it makes a huge difference to your system overall.

[djfarmo]

Good article - thanks for posting.